Thursday, March 17, 2011

Recently, a couple of leaked images of a new Windows 8 build revealed a new visual style named ‘Aero Lite’. The theme features some flat Metro styles, similar to those found in Microsoft’s Media Center application and Windows Phone 7. It is believed that the “Aero Lite” user-interface will replace the Windows 7 Basic interface which was originally intended for users lacking in hardware to run the full Windows Aero experience.

Shortly after the leak, a DeviantART user designed a theme for Windows 7 that sports the new ‘Aero Lite’ UI. The theme changes the Window Frame (Aero), Window Caption Buttons (Aero), various buttons like Push Buttons, Radio Buttons etc., the taskbar, Start Menu and Jump Lists.

The designer says that he is not yet finished with the theme. You can either try out the unfinished but working theme or wait for him to complete it. Download Aero Lite theme.

How to apply the theme?

Download Universal Theme Patcher. Run it in Administrative mode (right-click > "Run as administrator"). UAC must be turned off.

After the patch does the job, restart the computer to take effect.

Extract contents of the downloaded archive file into C:\Windows\Resources\Themes and double-click on .theme file.